Experimental observation of non-linear effects in the propagation of a Friedlander pulse in a finite-length closed tube

The theory of linear acoustics can only deal with waves of infinitesimal amplitudes and propagating a relatively short distance. As the wave amplitude and/or distance of propagation increase, the geometrical and physical non-linearities can greatly affect how the wave propagates in a medium, and phenomena such as shock formation and waveform distortion become important [1, 2]. Most of the works on finite-amplitude plane waves in a tube deal with continuous waves. Pestorius and Blackstock [3] investigated sinusoidal wave and broadband acoustic noise in an infinite tube (finite tube with an anechoic termination). Nakamura et al. [4] presented a computational analysis of the waveform of plane N-waves in a circular tube and concluded that the slope of the straight-line segment of the waveform is affected by the non-linear distortion and the boundary layer dissipation.